Time Crunch for Female Scientists: They Do More Housework Than Men

The Chronicle of Higher Education
January 19, 2010

When the biologist Carol W. Greider received a call from Stockholm last fall telling her she had won a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, she wasn't working in her lab at the Johns Hopkins University. The professor of molecular biology and genetics was at home, folding laundry.
Ms. Greider does many of the household chores, but she isn't alone. A number of her female colleagues also do more around the house than their male partners.
"It is not just housework. For women with kids, it is all the other stuff: scheduling sports and play dates, play dates, remembering all of the calendar events for the whole family," said Ms. Greider, who has two school-age children.
A new study from the Michelle R. Clayman Institute for Gender and Research at Stanford University has found that female scientists do 54 percent of their core household tasks, such as cooking, cleaning, and laundry—about twice as much as their male counterparts. (Paid help and children made up some of the difference.) The results reinforce the findings of other studies. Most important, they indicate that women often have more obligations at home and lower retention rates in their fields.
The study, "Housework Is an Academic Issue," found that women's academic rank had little impact on their household-chore percentage; senior and junior faculty members put in similar hours. Women also worked at their paying jobs about 56 hours a week, almost the same number of hours as men do.

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